Patients with medical issues requiring specialist overseas healthcare will now be able to access treatment at the “ordinary cost of care” under the UK National Health Service quota system, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Nick Gent has said.
Cayman recently signed on to the quota system which allows British overseas territories to access, at cost, healthcare for specialist cases that cannot be treated locally.
“We can do so at what is the ordinary cost of care. It makes a big difference to us, both in terms of the access to highly specialist clinical services, but also of the affordability of some unusual complex care needs,” Gent explained.
Cayman’s inclusion in the quota system follows May’s Joint Ministerial Council meeting in the UK. A total of five patients annually can access the facility. This year Ascension Island, Bermuda, Tristan da Cunha and Cayman were added to the facility already open to territories including Bermuda and Turks and Caicos.
Gent said since Cayman’s use of the facility is limited, it will be reserved for specialist cases, including rare cancers.
“We wouldn’t want to use it for minor things. This is really for where we’ve got very complex care needs of a child with multiple conditions; pregnancies with very difficult, potential complications; and unusual surgery that we couldn’t access elsewhere,” he said, adding the facility is not bound by any particular specialty.
Good news for rare cases
He said being able to have this facility is an “extra string to the health services bow”.
To date, no cases have been identified for the facility, but Gent said in the 10 months that he has been chief medical officer, he has seen only two patients for whom Cayman could have used that benefit.
However, he said, there were other providers available in the US that could provide similar services.
He said there will probably be one or two cases a year that Cayman will use the system for, “but it will be for cases that we would’ve otherwise had real difficulty in finding the right care for”.
“The fact that we will only be paying at cost at the standard NHS tariff is also a nice reassurance to us because you know that both the service is there and it’ll be affordable,” he added.
Gent said there is no set guideline for what cases will be selected for the facility. However, it will not be used for treatments that are easily accessible through the current preferred providers like hospitals in Florida.
“The transport links and the transfer systems are already there,” he said, adding that selection will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
Not for everyday cases
Gent said it is important the population in Cayman have access to the best healthcare systems in the world.
Cayman’s health services can manage standard medical issues, he said, “but if somebody develops a health problem which is unusual or it’s rare or it’s complex”, then through the NHS facility, “we still have a way [of] offering treatment to people”.
Gent said he is also looking to a future where Cayman does not send patients overseas, but instead looks to exchange expertise.
“I think actually we need to start thinking about sending clinical staff overseas to learn new skills to bring back as well. There’s lots that we need to explore and the UK is obviously one of the important territories for us because it has a mature healthcare system,” he said, adding that the UK also has an advanced health-education system, including post-graduate training.
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The National Health Service is under severe stress and has been for years. This offer needs to be taken with a pinch of salt unless our patients are prioritised over domestic patients many of whom are on 6 month or longer waitlists.